Of Wounded Bodies and the Old Manchu Archive: Documenting Personnel Management in the Early Manchu State1 He Bian Depts. of History and East Asian Studies, Princeton University This article examines the only bilingual component in the Old Manchu Archive—the record of 228 officers and soldiers’ battle wounds, as well as Nurhaci’s decision to re- ward them after he became khan in 1616. Departing from previous scholarship that highlights the historiographical impulse that shaped these pre-conquest documents, I argue that the compilation of archival materials (dangse) under the nascent Latter Jin state was also motivated by the need to recognize the meritorious deeds of military personnel and manage their ranks and privilege in writing. The enigmatic presence of a Manchu- only copy of the battle wound documents, which bears marginal notes con- current with its active use as a ledger, indicates the rise of a more standardized system of military administration and the ascent of Manchu script as the dominant language for documentation. 負傷的身體與 《舊滿洲檔》： 早期滿洲國家形成中的人事紀錄 邊和 普林斯頓大學歷史系及東亞研究系 摘要 本文考察《舊滿洲檔》中僅見的一批滿漢雙語文書及其滿文複本（“寒字 檔”1- 42葉）。雙語文書中記載了二百二十八名軍官及士兵在作戰中負傷的類 型及數目，以及努爾哈赤給予他們的賞賜。以往研究中多強調後金及清代修 訂國史對檔案形態及內容的影響，而本文意在指出後金檔冊的形成亦出於軍 事化人事管理之需要。此外，雙語文書的滿文複本存在大量對數目字紀錄的 塗改，顯示該文書曾被作為軍功簿頻繁使用，亦說明後金國家的人事管理逐 漸趨於標準化、滿文的應用趨於普遍化。 1. I would like to thank the organizers and audience at the 2016 Manchu Studies Conference held at the University of Michi- gan for their initial comments. My gratitude also goes to Beatrice Bartlett, Susan Naquin, Nicola di Cosmo, Hasegawa Masato, José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente, and the audience at the 2017 Princeton East Asian Studies lunch colloquium for their feedback. Mårten Söderblom Saarela and Eric Schluessel carefully edited the article. All remaining errors are mine. http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/saksaha.13401746.0016.001 1 Saksaha Vol. 16 In 1931, researchers in Beijing discovered a set of documents from the former deposito- ries of the Qing Grand Secretariat. The thirty- one volumes, covered with yellow paper, were predominantly written in Old Manchu (tongki fuka akū hergen “characters with- out circles and dots”) and chronicled events and edicts during the Tianming (1616– 1626) and Tiancong (1627– 1635) reigns. On the same shelf were a second set of yel- low silk- covered documents written in standard Manchu (tongki fuka sindaha hergen “characters with circles and dots”), identical to those discovered in 1905 by the Japanese scholar Naitō Torajirō 内藤虎次郎 (Konan 湖南, 1866– 1934) in the Mukden Palace. We now know that the standard Manchu documents were completed on the Qianlong emperor’s order by 1780 as part of his longstanding effort to keep the old script legible. The 1931 discovery of the “original documents” (yuandang 原檔) in Old Manchu gave a competitive edge to Chinese historians vis-à- vis their Japanese counterparts with re- gard to the early history of the Qing dynasty, a subject made more sensitive given the imminent enthronement of Puyi as the figurehead of Manchukuo the following year.2 Since then, the so- called Old Manchu Archive (Jiu Manzhou dang 舊滿洲檔, orig- inals in Taipei) and the Qianlong Standard Manchu duplicates (Ch. Manwen laodang, Ja. Manbun rōtō 滿文老檔) became arguably the single most important source for the rise of Jurchen power in early seventeenth century Northeast Asia.3 As the earliest extant examples of the script since its adaptation from Mongolian letters in the late 1590s, the documents shed light on evolving features of the Manchu language, before the familiar form with diacritics was consolidated in the 1630s and further standard- ized through the dynasty’s rule.4 Early research and translations of Jiu Manzhou dang (JMZD) and Manbun rōtō (MBRT) have deeply shaped our standard narrative of pre- 2. For the discovery and study of Qing documents in Republican China, see Beatrice Bartlett, “Saving China’s History: The Discovery and Debate Concerning the Sorting and Arranging of the Qing Archives, and their eventual dispersion, 1912– 1949,” lecture at Princeton University (March 8, 2016); and idem., “Qingdai dang’an lunshu de huigu: 1616-1999” 清 代檔案論述的回顧: 1616- 1999, in Fu an de lishi: Dang’an kaojue yu Qing shi yanjiu 覆案的歷史: 檔案考掘與清史研 究, ed. Chen Hsi- yuan 陳熙遠 (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2013), 1– 58. For the sensitivity of pre- Conquest Qing history in Republican China, see Madeleine Yue Dong, “How to Remember the Qing Dynasty,” in The Politics of Historical Production in Late Qing and Republican China, eds. Tze- ki Hon and Robert J. Culp (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 323– 74. 3. For foundational studies that compared the Old Manchu and standard Manchu documents, see Kanda Nobuo 神田信 夫, “From Man- wen lao- tang to Chiu Man- chou tang,” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 38 (1980): 71– 94; Zhuang Jifa 莊吉發, “Wenxian zuzheng: ‘Manwen laodang’ yu Qingshi yanjiu” 文獻足徵：滿文老檔與清史研 究, Manxue yanjiu 滿學研究4 (1998): 85– 115 and other articles in the same issue; Guang-lu and Li Xuezhi, “Qing Taizu chao Lao manwen yuandang yu Manwen laodang zhi bijiao yanjiu” 清太祖朝老滿文原檔與滿文老檔之比較研究 in Lao Manwen yuandang lunji 老滿文原檔論集, ed. Li Xuezhi, Appendix 1 (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1971). Liu Housheng 刘厚生, Jiu Manzhou dang yanjiu 旧满洲档研究 (Changchun: Jilin wenshi chubanshe, 1993); Yan Chongnian 阎崇年, “‘Wu quandian laodang’ ji Qianlong chaoben yi yan shuping” 《无圈点老档》及乾隆抄本译研述评, Gugong bowuyuan yuankan (1998.3): 32– 46; Kim Tu- hyŏn 金斗鉉, Manmun nodang kwa Ku manjudang taejop’yo: T’aejojo 滿文老檔과舊 滿洲檔對照表: 太祖朝 (Ulsan Kwangyŏksi: Ulsan Taehakkyo ch’ulp’anbu, 2010). For Old Manchu documents beyond the JMZD, see Tatiana Pang and Giovanni Stary, New Light on Manchu Historiography and Literature: The Discovery of Three Documents in Old Manchu Script (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1998), and idem., Manchus versus Ming. Qing Taizu’s “Procla- mation” to the Ming Dynasty (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2010). 4. T. A. Pang, The Manchu Script Reform of 1632: New Data and New Questions, Studia Orientalia 87 (Helsinki, 1999). 201–6. 2 Of Wounded Bodies and the Old Manchu Archive Figure 1. Photograph of bilingual documents in Xie Guozhen, Qing kaiguo shiliao kao (1930), front matter. conquest Qing history.5 In recent years, new research on the Old Manchu Archive was greatly enhanced by the publication of a new, much clearer facsimile edition by the National Palace Museum in 2005, under the slightly different title Manwen yuan- dang (MWYD), as well as the First Historical Archive’s publication of the Qianlong-era compilers’ annotated version that reflected their interpretations of the old script (Neige cangben Manwen laodang, hereafter NGMW for Neige Manwen).6 This study primar- ily cites the 1969 JMZD due to its wider availability but uses images from the 2005 MWYD, with references to MWRT and NGMW, when discussing the rendering of pre- conquest language into standard Manchu. 5. See for instance Gertraude Roth Li, “State-Building Before 1644,” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 9, Part 1, ed. Willard J. Peterson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 9–72. Frederic Wakeman’s The Great Enterprise (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) largely relied on Roth Li and Japanese scholarship on Manchu sources, and his discussion of the latter was sparse in comparison to Chinese sources. 6. Zhuang Jifa, ‘“Manwen yuandang,’ ‘Neige cangben manwen laodang’ yu Qingchao qianshi de yanjiu” 《滿文原檔》、《內 閣藏本滿文老檔》與清朝前史的研究.” In Fu an de lishi: Dang’an kaojue yu Qing shi yanjiu, ed. Chen Hsi- yuan (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2013), 59- 144. 3 Saksaha Vol. 16 The Manchuness of the Old Manchu Archive, however, was not taken for granted upon the discovery of those documents in 1931. In one of the earliest published images of the records, Xie Guozhen 謝國楨 (1901–1982), then a young scholar working at the National Library in Beijing, noted the existence of “parallel Manchu and Chinese texts” 滿漢文並行 in the set (see Figure 1). Examining the originals together with renowned historian Chen Yinke 陳寅恪 (1890– 1969) and Feng- kuan 奉寛 (b. 1876), a former Mongol bannerman and scholar who conducted extensive research on the Grand Sec- retariat collection, Xie highlighted the unconventional Chinese rendering of important tribe names such as Yehe and Ula (葉赫作拽黑、吳喇作兀剌).7 Chen Chieh- hsien 陳捷先, in his editorial introduction to the 1969 facsimile edition of JMZD, con- firmed that the only volume containing bilingual documents was number 16 of the whole set, known as the Hanzidang 寒字檔 (indexed with the Chinese character han by the Qianlong- reign editors according to the order of the sequence of characters in Qianziwen 千字文 [Thousand character essay], a common bibliographical ordering tool) and dated to Tianming 9 (1624), since they were bound together with other documents composed that year. Chen also noted that many Chinese characters in the Hanzidang appeared quite “vulgar” (cusu 粗俗), even erroneous (biezi 別字).8 The Chi- nese parts of the Hanzidang were eliminated in the Qianlong standard Manchu edition, as the eighteenth-century editors focused primarily on increasing the legibility of the Manchu text. In this article, I use the bilingual documents of Hanzidang to highlight the transition from a polyglot culture of documentation to standardized Manchu under Nurhaci’s reign.9 As discussed elsewhere by Pamela Crossley and others, the idea of a Manchu state did not coalesce until the 1630s, and the processes by which a majority population of different ancestries and linguistic capabilities subscribed to the language of a minority elite are worth further investigation.10 The bilingual records of theHan - zidang are particularly important in this regard. Unlike the majority of entries in the Old Manchu Archive, Nurhaci’s edicts (ejehe) recorded in folios 1–28 of the Hanzidang are not chronicles that documented the khan’s day- to- day business. Instead, they are undated, recording battle wounds of officers and soldiers as well as the reward and privilege they received in return. Furthermore, the 7.